


Firefly drabbles, ficlets, and haikus

by sophinisba



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: haikuathon, Double Drabble, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Episode Related, F/F, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Friendship, Gen, Haiku, M/M, Poetry, dribble
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-02-14
Updated: 2007-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:08:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>-- Please get up.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Yes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \-- Please get up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For gamerchick and daysdark on the occasion of their engagement. <3

\-- Wash...  
\-- Just wait.  
\-- Please get up.  
\-- I'm on bended knee...  
\-- This really ain't necessary, Wash.  
\-- ...To declare my endless, undying love....  
\-- Which you've already declared ten times today.  
\-- A love that knows no fear, no boundaries...  
\-- A love that dares to embarrass everyone it touches.  
\-- Who's getting touched? It's just you and me here, Zoe.  
\-- My point exactly. I want less declaring, more doing.  
\-- Fine, but first say you'll be my wife.  
\-- Stand up and ask me, little man.  
\-- I love you, Zoe. Marry me.  
\-- Shut up and kiss me.  
\-- Is that a yes?  
\-- _Kiss_ me already.  
\-- Say it.  
\-- YES.


	2. Five Things River Tam Secretly Knows about the Serenity Crew

Everyone knows about the noises Kaylee and Inara make when they're together. River knows how quiet Kaylee gets afterwards.

The old man knows her and she knows his face, though she never had a name for him before.

Simon doesn't want babies, but River's not the only one who wants them to be married.

Jayne won't do it. Even he isn't sure, but River is.

Zoe doesn't care so much for her own safety, or she wouldn't be anywhere near Mal. But between rescue missions, with Wash in the infirmary and Mal still with Niska, she sits alone and cries.


	3. Knowing Your Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inara and Book

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt from Shirebound: Preacher stars Inara

For all his poses of outlaw nobility, Mal's got a sadistic streak, a part of him that takes pleasure in humiliating. It seems to get stronger when he's feeling inferior, feeling threatened, be it by a preacher or a prostitute. He's got a need to put them in their place. 

And until they reach Boros Inara decides that her place is her shuttle. They don't call her ambassador without reason – she knows how to keep the peace. She stays away to make it easy for the Shepherd to avoid her, expecting Kaylee to bring her some food and company later.

When Book comes instead, at first she's at a loss, but he's polite and kind; his sense of humor is softer than Mal's, less sharp. Inara's known fire and brimstone preachers before, but she guesses they do better in isolated settlements. You need to be flexible to travel between stars.

By the end of the next day his place is kneeling before her, confessing his confusion. Inara remembers all the times, some of them in these last two days, when she thought she was on the wrong ship. "Or maybe," she says now, "you're exactly where you ought to be."


	4. Introduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylee and River

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt from Danachan: River, Kaylee, quiet

Kaylee wakes up to bright light, a lovely gliding numbness, and the soft sound of someone else breathing in the infirmary. She turns her head.

"Well now, you I can't say I recognize. And I thought we made all our introductions before." But the stranger is sleeping and doesn't answer.

The girl wakes up with a jerk, gasping and looking for a way out. "Don't you fret," Kaylee soothes, "Simon's taking good care of us."

She goes calm, just like a charm. Kaylee knows someone will explain everything later. For now it's good to lie still and share the quiet.


	5. Moonshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mal/Saffron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from rubynye: Mal, drunk, dream

One more dusty town on another cracked dry moon. One more slug of moonshine strong enough to knock you into another world, and the impact can't come fast enough for Mal. He stumbles back to sleep on board and dreams of a woman who didn't turn trickster and never turned tricks. The Saffron of his dreams is clean and kind and innocent as ever the real one pretended to be. They make love and make a life together in a peaceful little town that no one's ever heard of.

He wakes up to a thrumming engine and a throbbing head.


	6. Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon and Inara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from honeyandvinegar: curiosity/classical music/skin

There's a particular bearing to her that reminds Simon of many of the women he grew up with. River doesn't have it because she still carries herself like a child. And as for the rest of the people on this ship, well, the less said about their manners the better.

His father paid for him to spend the night with a Companion once, as a gift, just after he finished his first surgical rotation. She'd burned candles and made him tea and stroked the pain and tension out of his hands with a level of skill that left him awed.

Late in the evening he wondered if she was getting impatient or bored. He explained that he liked her company but preferred not to have intercourse with a stranger. Was he worried about disease, she asked. No, simply a preference. They had a long and wonderful conversation about classical music.

He thinks of her often, and more since he met Inara. Every time he hears her musical voice, sees a flash of her smooth skin, he wonders what that might have been like. Not the sex, but all of it. Doing what was expected. Being the son his father wanted.


	7. Fitting In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylee and Inara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place following "Shindig"

As well as she figures she knows Inara, she's always finding out something new about her life. This week it's that fancy dresses aren't as comfortable as Inara makes them look, and girls who wear fancy dresses aren't all as nice to talk to as they are to look at.

Once everybody's safe and sound and the cargo bay's full of smelly cattle, it's even nicer than usual to breathe the perfume of Inara's shuttle. "Persephone's awful nice to visit," Kaylee says, "but I'd never fit in there."

"No," says Inara, slowly combing Kaylee's hair, "there's no place like home."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Book and River

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Shirebound: "supper warm River". Takes place following "Shindig".

"Do you remember what's in this one, River?"

They've run out of the cans of food that still have labels. Book holds up one of the plain tin ones.

"Peas? Corn? Peaches, maybe?"

She sticks out her tongue.

He sighs. It doesn't matter much anyway. He opens the tin. Spinach.

Everyone eats heartily when Book makes the supper. It doesn't matter that the fresh fruits and vegetables he brought with him are long gone. He serves the food hot, he seasons it well, and, what matters most, he cares about the people he's making it for. River eats her fill.


	9. Ever Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoe/Wash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place following "Our Mrs. Reynolds"

"Turns out somebody's more faithful to his wife than he makes out to be."  
"I never once lost faith in your ability to kick my ass. Nor – "  
"Lose your desire to kiss my ass, ever again? Was that it?"  
"I was gonna say my deep and enduring love for you."  
"Come here and show me exactly what you mean, honey."  
" _Wo de ma_ , now _that's_ what I'm talking about."  
"Looks even better from up close, you'll find."  
"Who needs a gorgeous ex-Companion conwoman when – "  
"Still think you can have _this_?"  
"Ow! Zoe, careful, my head!"  
"You're such a baby."   
"Right you are."  
"Still mine?"  
"Always."


	10. Made of Better Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jayne/Meadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Jaynestown"

Jayne Cobb is far more handsome in person than the statue made him look. That's because the mud is ugly and so is everything made of mud, no matter how well you shape it. But the real Jayne is made of better stuff.

Meadows' mother used to tell him that he was too good for Canton. He was smart, good-looking, determined. If he could find his way off-world maybe he could make something of himself. "I'd rather make my mark here," he told her, and he tells Jayne the same thing now. "Nothing can stop us if we stand together."


	11. The Day You Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoe, Mal, Serenity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Out of Gas"

Zoe calls things like she sees them, and what she saw that first day was a piece of _fei-oo_ , but Mal was already in love. "She'll be with you till the day you die," he'd said, and though she'd made a joke of it, she feared he had a death wish, that all his talk of freedom really just meant giving up. But it'd been so long since she'd seen him look that hopeful (looking back now, a year's next to nothing, but time worked differently just after the war) that she couldn't oppose him, could only tease a little.

Five years on she wakes up in the second shuttle with the skinny young doctor leaning over her. As soon as Wash hears she's awake he runs over from the helm, and Zoe's about to say something about how somebody needs to fly the thing, but then River's at the controls and doing a damn fine job. Except that they're flying in the wrong direction. "Go back," she orders, and no amount of talk about limited oxygen or captain's orders can change her mind. "If I'm gonna die today," says Zoe, "it'll be on _Serenity_." River turns the shuttle around.


	12. Thank You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jayne/Simon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Rubynye: "Jayne, kiss, kick"; takes place after "Ariel".

"I want to thank you again for saving River and me back there."

"It weren't nothin', I already said." 

"We put our lives in your hands – "

"They were gonna kill me too, in case you hadn't noticed, so just... quit lookin' at me with them pretty eyes, will you?"

"No, Jayne, I don't want to stop looking at you. Unless I'm doing this..." Simon closed his eyes as he closed his lips over Jayne's, and then _opened_.

"Well ain't that a kick in the head," Jayne said after. "I'll be your hero whenever you want." He kissed him again.


	13. Sharing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jayne and Mal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from gamerchick: "Jayne, Vera, money", takes place immediately following "War Stories" (also references "Ariel").

"That's some fine soup," said Jayne.

"Nice of Zoe and Wash to share," Mal agreed.

"Nice of all of us to share, I think you mean."

"What's that now?"

"You might not've noticed, bein' tied to them torture machines and all, but Zoe paid Niska an awful lotta money to get you back."

"Only managed to get Wash back in that way, as I recall."

"Yeah, well... but it _coulda_ got you back too, if Niska'd been decent about things."

"Well, that's a way of lookin' at it."

"What I'm sayin' is, we all put in our own money what we earned from the job so's we could get you back, both of you. That's because we. Well, what you said before about. In the airlock? And risked all our lives to come back the second time because. And me too, see? So next time you're gettin' set to kill somebody 'cause you decided they ain't loyal enough, might wanna remember what me and Vera did for you back there." 

"And forget all about how you tried to get more money for yourself by selling out River and Simon."

"That's right."

"Jayne."

"Yeah?"

"You ate all the soup for yourself."


	14. Safe With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> River and Ruby, set of 5 haiku

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for haikuathon

River understands  
some secrets are for telling  
and some for keeping.

Ruby is like a  
secret sister: skin and bone,  
wide eyes and silence.

Is life simpler here?  
That's what Doralee says but  
not what Ruby thinks.

Men hurt little girls  
the same on Jiangyin as at  
Alliance bases.

But these are secrets  
Simon doesn't need to know.  
River holds her tongue.


End file.
